The Epic Battle Behind the Apollo Spacesuit

From left to right, Aldrin (obscured), Collins, and
Armstrong walk along a corridor at the Kennedy
Space Center on their way to the Saturn V/Apollo 11
vehicle. Credit: Courtesy Kennedy Space Center,
Cape Canaveral, FL, NASA

Promotional pamphlet showing use of DuPont
materials in 20 of the 21 layers of the Apollo A7L.
Credit: Courtesy ILC Dover, Inc.

Neil Armstrong’s first footfall on the moon was one small step for man, but it was one giant leap for a maker of ladies’ girdles. He wouldn’t have had such a snazzy spacesuit were it not for an epic struggle between a by-the-book defense contractor and a lingerie company run by a car mechanic and a TV repairman.

As chronicled in author Nicholas de Monchaux’s Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, out in March, the battle started in 1962. International Latex Corporation (which you may know by its current name, Playtex) won a contract to develop the Apollo spacesuit. (Any company capable of making a girdle tough enough to sustain that 1960s hourglass shape without cutting off the wearer’s oxygen can handle the rigors of space.) But rather then let ILC go it alone, NASA shackled the company to the military-industrial complex, forcing it to work as a subcontractor of aerospace conglomerate Hamilton Standard. Suspicious of Playtex’s freewheeling fashion-industry ways, Hamilton started on its own prototype, the Tiger, which is what got submitted to NASA. The suit was a flop, and Hamilton blamed ILC, which lost its subcontractor status.

But Apollo still needed a spacesuit, so NASA set up its own version of Fashion Week, inviting two manufacturers to submit prototypes. So three years after winning (and then losing) the contract, a dozen ILC staffers picked the locks of their old offices at Hamilton and, Sterling Cooper-style, stole back their designs. Working round-the-clock shifts for six weeks, they finished a brand-new suit, the AX5L, in time to be a dark-horse third entry in the 1965 competition. It won, acing 12 of the 22 tests—and since one rival suit wouldn’t fit through the door of the space capsule, and the helmet of the other exploded, there was no runner-up.

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